Explore the intricate process of drafting a roof plan in AutoCAD, from adding text and symbols, to creating hatch patterns. This article delves into the specifics of defining roofs with a run and rise slope, constructing roof slope arrows, and representing composition shingles using the hatch function.
Key Insights
- The article guides through adding text on the drawing. For instance, indicating the 'ridge' of a roof, which could be mistaken for a valley in modern V-shaped roofs. The text is added using multi-line text and then moved and rotated into place for clarity.
- Understanding how to use blocks is crucial in AutoCAD as they help in defining specific roof attributes. For example, the roof slope arrow, which represents the run and rise ratio of the roof (4:12 in this case), is brought in from the drafting blocks. The article also discusses the importance of setting the uniform scale for the block correctly.
- The article educates on using the hatch function to represent composition shingles on the roof plan. A spline is drawn on the A no-plot layer to define a section of the roof where the shingle pattern is applied using the hatch function. The angle of the hatch pattern is adjusted to match the slope of the roof.
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In this video, we are going to finish the geometry of this drawing by adding our text, our symbols, and our hatch pattern. Let's start with the text.
There's only one bit of text on this drawing, which is the word "RIDGE." I'll go back to the Home tab and I will change my current Layer to A-Roof-Text. Now this might seem like it is obvious that this is a ridge, but in some cases, houses are now built with a V-shaped roof instead of an A-shaped roof, and that could be a valley instead.
So in this case, it is important to specify—at least for the Roof Plan—that this is a ridge. This will become very apparent when we draw our Elevations later in this course. So for now, let's go to Multi-Line Text.
I'll draw a small window over here, and in all caps I will type the word "RIDGE." This text is six inches tall and that's exactly what I'd like, but my justification should be Bottom Center, and that's so we can snap it to the Midpoint of this line. I'll close the Text Editor by clicking the check mark, and we can now see that the RIDGE text has a snap at the Bottom Center.
We can use Grip Edits to move this and rotate it into place. I'll click the Grip to make it hot, right-click, Rotate, and I'll rotate this up 90. Enter. Click the Grip again to make it hot, and this is automatically stretching the geometry. I can pick the Midpoint here. Now this is too close, in my opinion, to the ridge line itself, so I'm going to select the text and nudge it to the left using the Control key and the Left Arrow key. You can nudge this as far away as you'd like.
Don't move it too far away, but I think that looks pretty good. Now I'd like to add our symbols, which are our Roof Slope Arrows, and you'll see these on your handout. They say 4:12. That means for every 12 inches of run (horizontal distance), there are 4 inches of rise.
Very seldom are roofs defined with an angle. Instead, a run-and-rise slope is used to make construction easier. Remember, we bring Blocks in on Layer 0, so I'll switch back to Layer 0 and go I, Enter to open our Blocks dialog box.
Now in our current drawing, we only have a few Blocks, so in this case, I'm going to Browse. I'll jump out of Title Blocks, go into Drafting Blocks, and find Slope Arrow. I'll open that. Now you can see we didn’t set any of our options, so I'll simply click on the screen, hit Escape, Escape, Escape, select that geometry, and delete it.
We need to make sure that we set this information up first. Slope Arrow is still in our drawing—there it is—but now let's set our Uniform Scale to 48. Now I can pick Slope Arrow. We can see it's going to the right, so I'm going to place it on this side of my drawing.
I'll click Slope Arrow, click to place here, and this is 4:12. I'll hit OK. Now I could place multiple over here, but instead, I'll hit Escape, Control+S to save, and in this case, we can Mirror the Block over to the other side of the drawing.
I'll go Mirror, pick my Block, Enter to lock it in, and my Mirror line is simply going to be my ridge line, so I can choose the Endpoint here to the Endpoint here. Erase source objects? No. We want to keep both objects, so I'll hit N, Enter. Zoom Extents, and Control+S to save. I'll close my Blocks dialog box. The last thing we need to add to the Roof Plan is the composition shingles pattern section.
Now, we could put a Hatch on the entire drawing to show that this entire roof is composition shingles. You can see on the handout that we did something a little different. Instead, in this case, we used a Spline to just show a small section of the roof being composition shingles.
That Spline is not visible across the entire surface. We can see the shingles being broken and not drawn all the way across. This implies that the entire roof is composition shingles. In a larger project, we would have Specifications and Keynotes designating that the entire roof is, in fact, composition shingles, but for now, we want to draw a small Spline that is going to be hidden in our drawing.
Now, we know that when we draw a Spline or any geometry that is hidden when we print, it should go on the A-No-Plot Layer. So I'll change my current Layer to A-No-Plot, and in this case, we're going to draw a very simple Spline. Something to keep in mind when drawing Splines is to use as few points as possible to make the desired shape. I'm going to use six points in this case, but go ahead and try for yourself to see how many points you need to draw this Spline.
I'm going to go to the Draw panel and find Spline Fit. It's this first option here. Now, I don't need to Object Snap to anything because we are going to use the Close option, so watch as I do this.
I'll click to start creating my Spline, and now before I go back to finish my Spline—instead of snapping to the Endpoint—I can see that there's a Close option on my Command Prompt. So I'll type C, Enter, and that connects the two points in my Spline, making it a smooth curve around that point. I'm going to redraw this with you, and I'll make mine a little smaller, but again, I'm only using six points. Spline Fit, I'll draw here, and I'll make this small enough so that I can put my text—my Multileader—next to this shape.
C, Enter to close, and now I've drawn a fairly simple Spline shape on the A-No-Plot Layer. Now we want to add our Hatch, and that's going to go on the A-Roof-Pattern Layer. So I'll change to A-Roof-Pat, and we can add our Hatch. I'll go Hatch, and in this case, we are looking for a shingle Hatch. This one is actually called AR-RSHKE.
Now just to see a preview of the texture, I'm going to click into my Spline, and we can see the shingles appear. Now, this scale is not the same scale as on our PDF handout, but we will update this later in the course. For now, I just want to place my Hatch into the Spline.
One thing that we can change at this time is the angle of our Hatch. The shingles appear to be running down the screen, and we need them to run to the right with the slope of the roof. So I will go to my Angle here and change this to 90. Enter, and now the shingles are facing the correct direction.
I'll close Hatch Creation, and Control+S to save. In the next video, we are going to add the Multileader that says "Composition Shingles" and create the A401 Roof Plan sheet file. See you there!
